The World Club Challenge clash from Saturday night will go down in history as Wigan Warriors became just the second club to win a record fifth title.
For the second year in a row, the NRL champions Penrith Panthers were defeated and after relaying the excuses in 2023 that they hadn’t prepped, there can be no such excuse this year against Wigan.
Some will point to officiating decisions but Wigan were incredibly unlucky themselves to have a brilliant Bevan French try chalked off, and claims of ‘fixing’ or ‘bias refereeing’ simply don’t do Matt Peet’s side justice.
Man of the Match Bevan French spoke post-game with the BBC explaining that it felt like the Cherry and Whites were “defending their line for 80 minutes”, and they did so wonderfully.
Harry Smith’s boot got them out of trouble on numerous occasions whilst Jai Field made one of the best full-back cover tackles that you’ll see all season.
Put simply, Wigan Warriors were brilliant and thoroughly deserved their World Club Challenge victory, something that even Nathan Cleary admitted post-game.
The clash brought back memories of the old-school England and Australia games with a crowd of over 24,000 in the DW Stadium roaring on every tackle, carry and error.
Such a brilliant spectacle was thankfully available on free-to-air TV on account of the BBC’s new TV deal, meaning a whole new audience has been exposed to our brilliant game.
World Club Challenge viewing figures almost double from 2023
The match was broadcast on BBC 2, Sky Sports Main Event and Sky Sports Action and the viewing figures are now in.
It has been confirmed that the peak viewing on BBC 2 was over half a million, whilst Sky boasted peak viewership of 80,000.
Averages were also at impressive rates of 350,000 and 51,000 which represented a 2.5% and 0.4% audience share, almost 3% of those watching TV viewing our incredible sport.
The above figures were revealed by Rugby League On TV who also confirmed that Sky Sports Action figures were as yet unreleased.
Whilst there were free-to-air games on 2022 and 2023 on Channel 4, with the 2023 World Club Challenge shown on Channel 4, the viewership for that game averaged just 202,000 instead.
Granted, that game was played in the morning but it could also be argued that the 2024 game was up against prime-time TV such as Gladiators, Michael McIntyre’s The Wheel and Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway.
Earning an average viewing total of almost double the mark made a year ago whilst hitting a peak of over half a million is a brilliant sign of the huge off-field strides being made by the sport at present.
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